Reviews

Spider-Man 2

Most of the boss levels, however, are pretty challenging. Joining Doc Ock are Spidey's old friends The Rhino, Shocker, Mysterio, and Black Cat, and each presents a different set of challenges. While the levels with Black Cat involve you chasing her across the city, the battles with Shocker are knockdown, drag-out fights filled with exploding balls of electricity and flying fists. All of these battles took a few tries for me to finish, which I always consider to be a good thing. And, while it wasn't particularly hard, the head-to-head with Mysterio actually made me laugh out loud.

Once you finally finish off your enemies, you receive "Hero Points" for your work. The addition of Hero Points adds a bit of an RPG feel to the game, in that you can bring them to stores for upgrades and new moves. Not only can you receive Hero Points for beating down baddies, you get them for completing any mission in the game. There are pizza delivery missions in which you must get a pizza from the parlor to a customer in a short period of time, photo missions for the Daily Bugle, as well as impromptu street missions involving little kids and lost balloons. While I liked the incorporation of Hero Points for the most part, certain levels had minimum points requirements that made them drag a little bit as I was forced to swing around the city looking for crime.

Graphically, the game looks very nice, particularly the reflections off the mirrored windows in the city. The sky changes as the day turns to night, and everything looks stunning at sunrise and sunset. I really enjoyed the look of Spider-Man's character model, but some of the NPCs and enemies seemed to be a bit clunky. Most of the animation is very smooth, as well. When Spidey swings and leaps through the city, he twists and contorts his body exactly as he does in the movie and it really lends a sense of realism to the proceedings. While the PS2 version isn't quite as nice looking as its Xbox counterpart, it still manages to hold its own. There were a few graphical hiccups and lags, but nothing that really took away from the overall experience.

One of the most impressive aspects of the game is the fully rendered model of New York City that acts as your virtual playground. You can swing, jump, or climb nearly anywhere in Manhattan (sorry, no outer boroughs!), from the top of the Empire State Building to the underside of the 59th Street Bridge. Helping you navigate around the city is a new type of top down, real time map. Hitting the back button will instantly yank your point-of-view from street level to a point well above the city, offering you the chance to see what's going on in the area around you. Within a few blocks, there are usually a lot of citizen missions and challenges, and, once you figure out where to go, getting there is just a hop, skip, and a swing away. The map system really comes in handy, as the city is huge and very easy to get lost in.